Seema Jayachandran is a Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on economic issues in developing countries, including environmental conservation, gender equality, labor markets, health, and education.

She is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award, and the Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award. Professor Jayachandran currently serves on the board of directors for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and is the chair of J-PAL’s gender sector.

She is co-editor for the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s program in Development Economics. In addition, she writes regularly for The New York Times as a contributor to the Economic View column.

Prior to joining Northwestern, she was a faculty member at Stanford University. She earned a Ph.D in economics from Harvard University, a master’s degree in physics and philosophy from the University of Oxford (where she was a Marshall Scholar), and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT.